In the meantime: The Slap

I have to admit I don’t often read contemporary Australian fiction. This is particularly embarrassing at writers’ festivals when I have to keep answering ‘No’ to questions starting with ‘Have you read...’ Sadly I never get asked if I’ve read obscure 18th century gothic novels like The Mysteries of Udolpho when I could answer positively. It’s especially embarrassing when it comes to award winners. However I can answer ‘YES!’ to “Have you read The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas” and I even read it before it won the Commonwealth Writers Prize. I can also enthuse about it without reservation - it’s a brilliant book. A group of family and friends are gathered at a barbecue. You know from the cover that someone is going to slap a child and all hell will break loose. What’s great is that you just don’t know who right until the moment it occurs. It’s lovely piece of suspense. As the story of the slap’s aftermath progresses the author moves from one character’s perspective to another. I love that fact that Tsiolkas draws you into each of these characters. Even the ones that made me groan with annoyance when I discovered we were following them seduced me and became fascinating people I didn’t want to leave. It’s a gripping portrayal of contemporary Australia centred on a Greek family and the various people around them. For overseas readers who want to insight into a contemporary society completely different to one portrayed in soaps, news and Baz Luhrman TV ads, this will be an eye-opener. For Australians the book challenges our own prejudices - and not simply in terms of whether you think the slap is justified. That is, quite literally, just the beginning.

Next draft submitted

OK I have to admit after the paralysis of the feedback, I am very happy with the net result of the changes to The Trouble with Sauce: the lead have more depth and my evil headmaster is now a much more interesting character which readers might relate to in a strange way. It’s one of the magical things about writing and is that you can go in and change something early on in the book and then suddenly something else further along the track quite unrelated suddenly makes a lot more sense - it’s as if the new section earlier on was always meant to be there.

I did give my editor some feedback on the feedback - in a positive way, which he was grateful for. So yes I did get feedback on the feedback on feedback.

Yikes, paralysis!

I guess it's like waking up to find out that your legs don't work. I got the feedback from the editor on The Trouble with Sauce and found out my brain/finger combination didn't work. I was right, he did HATE it. The feedback was so comprehensive in its list of faults (the plus side could have been written bus ticket) that I couldn't look at the book for over 2 weeks. I felt like sending the advance back and not bothering. It's a new experience for me. Normally the editor's feedback would have jumping out of my bed, determined to make the changes required to the book. With this, every time I swung my legs to the edge of the bed, they simply refused to walk. I knew they could walk. I knew they could run and jump, but like the most cliched soap opera, it was not the flesh that was weak but the mind. And by the way, I should know about cliched soap opera, the editor asked if I had been writing soap (Yes it was that bad!).

However after a week of miserable silence followed by a week of bitching, moaning and declaring I would never walk again I finally managed it. No, I didn't leap out of my wheelchair to rescue a small child in danger but I did manage to sort the wheat from the chaff in the feedback, see the many valid points that were made, and discard those I disagreed with.

I am walking freely through the text now and very happy with results so far. The only problem is, how do you tell your editor nicely you think their communication skills need some work? Can I give feedback on feedback? Would I then get feedback on my feedback on the feedback? Would it ever end?

It's been sent off

I’ve submitted the manuscript The Trouble with Sauce.  It sat ready for a few days, I’ve taken it as far as it can go without outside feedback, but something was holding me back, I’ve been really nervous about sending this one off.  There are three possible reasons for this.

1) It’s just not good enough

Part of me thinks it doesn’t work, but I couldn’t actually say why. I can’t pinpoint anything and say that’s wrong. The plot is fun and the characters are engaging. When I go through it, each chapter works, it’s not too long, it progresses the story, develops the characters, entertains and usually ends with a reason to start the next chapter and yet, I’m unsure.

2) It’s my baby

When I send the email with the text to the ABC, it’s also the point where it stops being my baby and becomes a product to be packaged, altered, stuffed in boxes and put out on shelves. It becomes a thing that has to sell, rather than the progeny of my imagination.

3) It means I have to start on ‘the big one’

When this book goes off that means it’s time for me to start on the next adult one, the one where I actually try to be a good writer instead of mildly entertaining one. That’s pretty scary. I know the time is coming, paragraphs, chapters and ideas pop into my head. Like a kettle about to boil, things are rising with increasing speed to the surface. Time to pour soon. That in itself is challenging and reason enough not to send off Trouble.

So which is it?  Much as I would like to be about clinging onto babies, it’s down to options 1 and 3 with option 1 being the strongest. 

My editor said he would try to get back to me the next day. I thought that was ambitious. It’s now a week later and I’m fearing the worst. If the email response starts with a line about what he ‘did’ enjoy about the book, I know I’m doomed to paragraphs of what didn’t work. If on the other hand he kicks of with ‘there’s still some work to do,’ or ‘there’s a few bits need tidying up’ I know I’m OK, and the inevitable ‘but’ will be a positive one.

It’s not brain surgery, but it’s close

One of the lovely things about writing books, and especially children’s books, is the enormous good will you receive from virtually everyone. I can think of few other professions where you can ask for help and it is so eagerly given. Imagine an accountant coming to you, asking for some help in putting together their figures - short shrift I would imagine. Not as a writer. For a scene in The Trouble with Sauce I needed some technical information on brain surgery: parts of the brain and implements used, so I turned to Adam, a psychiatrist friend. His eagerness to help was a treat: he did some research and even consulted his colleagues at the hospital where he works. They were all fascinated and equally enthusiastic. On being given the outline of the plot, the child psychiatric specialist gave it a thumbs up in appealing to boys.

The net result was sitting with Adam in the cafe beside the El Alamein fountain in Kings Cross being presented with a delicious array of new words. We giggled over the names of the implements: Raney Clip, Cottoniod Sponges and the splendid Caspar Vertebral Body Distractor. What fun I could have with a ‘body distractor’! It sounds like a surgical belly dancer who seductively arouses and distracts the body while the brain is hacked into. There is also a host of different ‘ronguers’: pituitary, Ruskin (a rhyming rongeur perhaps?) and trimline. However, the perfect implement for Trouble was the wonderfully descriptive Brain Retractor. It was even more thrilling when I looked up pictures of it. (See below). 

I was like a child in a toy shop who thinks he knows all the toys there were, suddenly then discovers a whole new section to play with.

Final breakthrough achieved

The point when you first reach the end of novel you’re writing is like breakthrough on a tunnel. It may just be dirty hole that lets through light but at least now you can walk through from end to end. The start of the tunnel is in much better shape than the end. The tunnel boring machine that is my mind’s imagination has chugged along at its lumbering pace, breaking a few cutting heads on the way. At the rear, the editing and polishing side of the mind works much faster and has almost caught up.

...and even a title!

I have achieved breakthrough on The Trouble with Sauce (yes I have finally decided on a name...I think) it’s a significant moment: the book now exists, it is a physical thing in the real world. Unfortunately the tunnel that is my book is far too long. It’s 30,000 words and it needs to be 25,000. The tunnel has come out at the right place but obviously there are a few more twist and turns than there should be if readers are to charge through at the required pace.

I’m now in the ‘it’s not good enough’ worrying stage. I run up and down my tunnel polishing, clarifying and adding enriching detail, all the while trying to reduce its length. 

I think I’m more concerned about how the editors will receive this book than any previous book. It might be because nobody else had read it. I may have gone completely off the quirky scale, the characters may not be defined enough. The list of things that I think need to be better grows every time I look at it. This could be a good thing. It could be a commitment to quality (...mmm I think I must still be in advertising mode with that phrase) but a nagging doubt remains.

Future decided...sort of

It’s finally been revealed that ABC Books will now be a partnership between ABC and Harper Collins after nearly a year of negotiations. Belinda at the ABC says this has good potential for authors. I will have to hope they don’t opt for a cull on the quirkier, not so stellar sales end of the writing roster. I got a good sense of position on the ‘importance scale’ with the announcement. ‘Key authors’ were phoned directly to be reassured about their contracts. The rest were emailed on the day of the announcement. I didn’t get the call. I didn’t even get the email! How lowly is that? This blog is rapidly becoming the literary equivalent of ‘My Life on the D List’.

Still I have a contract, I’ve been paid my advance and work is steaming ahead on the cover. However uncertain the future for authors (key or otherwise) is, the employees at ABC Books are doing it tougher. They know they don’t have jobs at the ABC after May, but are yet to find out if they have jobs at Harper Collins. Nice.

The darndest things..

I promised myself when I began primary school visits that I wouldn’t start doing ‘kids say the darndest things’ pieces, but I can resist posting this photo from Newtown Public. It’s part of a display on China. It reminds me of the type of stuff I used to do at school, coming, a cropper on the final hurdle. 

The school was great. I read out the first page of the next book and we discussed what things we should change, including the name of the bully. They quickly spotted that the name I had in there, ‘Harry’ didn’t sound like a bully and besides it was already taken by Mr Potter. They came up with Barry, Bruce, Boris and the splendid Igor. They thought I should change the name of the hero from Jonty Townsend to Jonah Townsend because there was a boy of that name in the school. I actually really like that because I wanted him to be an Islander or Maori. 

I got some fun title suggestions like:

• The Perfect Principal
  
• Perfect Tomatoes
  
• Perfect Behaviour
  
• The Tomato Principal
  
• Attention in Class
  

I quite like the last two. Do we have a winner there?

Stimulating new terminology

With the Government’s one off payments to low income earners hitting bank accounts this week, spending up big is the new black (and hopefully not the new red). The global financial crisis has given rise to a whole new bank of terminology we can incorporate into our every day lives to make everything we do sound better.

I’m no longer going shopping:

I’m implementing an economic stimulus package;

I’m investing in the retail sector;

I’m preventing an economic downturn.

Other new terms include:

As a result of declining interest rates I will be reallocating funds to the mining sector.

I’m redrawing on my mortgage to buy some diamond earrings.

In view of environmental concerns I’m implementing a fundamental shift in transport spending to focus on low emission alternatives.

The BMW’s been repossessed so I’m buying a bike.

In these tough times I think it’s important to still do something for those in need overseas.

I’m spending my bonus on designer clothes made in China.

The advice I’m receiving from the finance sector is that now is the time to reinvest in the market.

I’ve got a tip for a surefire winner at Rosehill. 

I’m delivering a much needed boost to the hospitality industry.

I’m going out for coffee.

I’m packaging my hospitality stimulus program with some assistance for the farming sector.

I’ll have a slice of cake with that coffee, thank you.

My hospitality stimulus package didn’t work, further measures are required.

I’m going out for a beer.

It’s a tough climate and if a temporary deficit is required, then so be it.

I’m opening a tab on the bar with my credit card.

These stimulus measures are having the desired impact.

The vodka shots have kicked it now.

Any job’s a good job in this economic climate.

I’ve just been sick, can someone clear it up?

It’s a definite goer, but what’s it called?

I finally have it in my hot hands. Three months after the verbal yes I have a signed contract for the next kid’s book. So in the fairground that is authoring a book, I can get off the “Will it be published” rollercoaster and run with shaky legs to the “Does my text look fat in this” Hall of Mirrors. There is where I start taking distorted looks at my text and think ‘It’s all blobby in the middle’. In the next mirror I decide my head looks enormous and start worrying whether I look like that in real life. Then it’s horribly thin and finally plain ugly without being funny.

Belinda and Mark, the editors at the ABC are standing by the Hook a Duck Book Title stall, spruiking hard for me to hook the duck with No Tomato Sauce on its bottom. They really don’t want me to pick the Attack of the Zombie Students duck. I think they have secretly removed it from the name ducks bobbing on the water. No Tomato Sauce, is relevant in that my evil school principal does hide the drugs in the tomato sauce but I’m not sure. Still I am an utterly crap title chooser, maybe I should leave it to the experts.

From there I’ll be forced onto the Book Cover Wurlitzer, where I get so many options and so many ideas that I end up spinning round and round and back where I started with a strong feeling of nausea.

Still for all my whingeing it is a fairground, it’s full of delights, bright lights and thrills and at some stage in the not too distant future I’ll actually get some money for it. Cancel the Christmas austerity measures and fatten the goose!

Talking grown up to an agent

After a month of shilly-shallying I finally phoned Selwa Anthony, the literary agent I first spoke to back in July. Part of me thought I should just put aside Crash Tactic, as the new book (the one in my head) is where I really want to be at. Another part thought, why waste an almost finished novel? So I sat down on a bench in Hyde Park and called expecting to leave a message. Selwa threw me by answering. Naturally I had to explain who I was again and what the situation was with Crash Tactic. She said it wasn’t worth sending that to her, she didn’t think she could place it, but she was interested in the new book when I told her about it. She told me to send her a few chapters when I written some. ‘I don’t need much’.

I have to say I was impressed and motivated. Clearly she’s not from the ‘I loved it, but I didn’t love it enough’ school of feedback. Big Tick. Absolutely straightforward and practical about what she could and couldn’t place. She won’t definitely take on the next book, but I left the phone call thinking ‘Great, all I have to do is impress her with a few chapters’. It seems so manageable. I’m not going to dash off any old tat, I’m going to write my best stuff yet (by a long way). It’s just down to me now to produce something really impressive and that’s exactly what I want.

The Zombie Breakthrough

One of the really exciting parts of writing a book is when suddenly it all crystalises and you realise what it’s all about. Some of the problems you were grappling with, things you’re not clear on suddenly fall into place.  It comes when you’re well into the first draft, it can’t possibly happen before, the world is too ill-defined. It’s the point where the world you’ve created in your book and the characters slips from your control a bit - you become less of a God and more of an all-seeing observer. I had that moment last week with Little Green Pills, the next children’s book.

While I had the broad arc of the plot and characters set out and I was chugging along OK, I knew I was missing something. Apart from my hero students discovering what the principal was doing to the kids and trying to expose him, there was no real danger, no excitement. I was missing the gasp at the end of some chapters. Then the solution came and it was down to zombies.

Actually, it was down to Jonty, my central character. As so often happens with the breakthrough moment it’s a character that delivers it. While Jonty was trying to win over the other students who are not ‘suddenly’ perfect I found myself writing him saying ‘they’re like zombies...must learn.... Must learn’. And that was it, suddenly the rest of novel appeared clearly. 

Rather than just being perfect, the zombie children are voracious and increasingly rabid learners, surpassing their teachers and becoming a scary in the lengths they will go to in the pursuit of knowledge. This lets me have some drama, a few chases through the skills, and a life and death dramatic conclusion. Let’s face it, the idea of perfectly behaved kids may be amusing for a page or two but perfection is dramatically boring. I need excess!

I’m now thinking of a new title: Attack of the Student Zombies, which for a book aimed at 8-12 year old boys is far more fun. I did send this title to Belinda the publisher at the ABC to see what she thinks. There’s been an ominous silence since.

Feedback on the potential new title would be much appreciated.